Having thrust himself into a debate over the direction of his sport’s slopestyle discipline in just its first appearance at the Olympics, the 20-year-old Park City, Utah native did not want to back away from his criticism that judges at the Sochi Games were too dazzled by big, acrobatic tricks at the expense of “style,” that nebulous commodity in which Kotsenburg specializes.

And boy, did it work.

The kid who grew up shredding at Park City Mountain Resort used his creativity and crazy grabs to lay down two of his best runs in the semifinals of the event at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park on Saturday, then stuck the performance of his life in the first run of the final to unexpectedly win the first gold medal awarded here.

“Maybe they heard me,” he said of the judges, “maybe they heard everybody else.”

Either way, Kotsenburg celebrated giddily with his American teammates, and walked away with a medal that many thought would belong only to somebody who could manage several “triple-cork” flips on his way down the course of rails and jumps. “Spin-to-win” is how Finland’s Roope Tonteri described the usual approach to winning in the sport.

But Kotsenburg turned all that on its head.

Just two days after leading a chorus of complaints about the judging in qualifying rounds, he was rewarded with a 93.50 for a run populated most prominently by a “Holy Crail” — a move Kotsenburg invented by combined two other grabs. The result is something that looks drastically different from what most other riders are doing.

“It’s pretty sick to see that some weird, creative stuff got rewarded,” he said.

The victory felt like a sudden rebuke of the more acrobatic tricks being performed by the presumptive favorites, such as Canada’s Max Parrot and Mark McMorris — former Winter X Games champions, both — who continued to fuel the judging debate by questioning the quality of the scoring.

“I do think there’s some work to be done in judging,” Parrot said.

Parrot wound up a distant fifth, undone like many riders by his attempts to land huge tricks and overtake Kotsenburg, whose winning score came after just the third run of the two-run, 12-man final. Parrot couldn’t pull off his big moves perfectly, and McMorris said he actually turned a planned triple-cork into a double, sensing the judges were scoring the double better even though the triple is harder.

“The judges don’t know how hard it is,” he said.

The decision to downgrade appeared to pay off, though, helping McMorris secure the bronze medal behind Norway’s Staale Sandbech, who bounced happily with Kotsenburg on the inflatable barriers around the finish area as the last riders came down the course.

But not every rival was questioning the judging.

“Sage’s run was really technical, even though his tricks are ridiculously stylish,” said Billy Morgan of Great Britain. “Putting the extra grabs and different grabs in tricks just adds to the difficulty. So really, as he does his style, he’s putting way more difficulty on his tricks, which is why Sage is now the Olympic champion.”

Advertisement

The event took place without snowboarding icon Shaun White, the two-time halfpipe champion who withdrew from the slopestyle eventon Wednesday because he said he wanted to focus on winning the halfpipe again. Norway’s Torstein Horgmo also was missing, after breaking his collarbone during a pre-race training session.

But that hardly mattered to Kotsenburg — or Ireland’s Seamus O’Connor, the 16-year-old from Park City who didn’t make the final but landed a triple cork for the first time in the semis.

“I couldn’t ask for anything more,” he said.

One of five children of snowboarding parents — Steve Kotsenburg is a real-estate agent in Park City, while Carol Ann helps organize schedules and travel — Kotsenburg attributed his victory to his spontaneous nature, deciding at almost the last minute to attempt a final move he’d “never even thought about doing before that run,” a so-called “back 16 Japan.”

“I just had this idea in my mind all day, and it ended up working out,” he said. “I called my brother and I talked to my … coach, and I was just like, ‘I think I might go 16-back Japan.’ He was just, like, ‘Send it! What do you have to lose?’ And I ended up landing it.”

So now, Kotsenburg has an historic gold medal — just the start of a huge medal haul for Utah athletes, potentially — and maybe a chance to change the direction his sport is moving.

“It’d be pretty sick to see everyone mix it up a little bit,” he said, “get a little more creative in there.”